Welcome to SuccessfulSavior.org, the ministry of Harmony Primitive Baptist Church in Donaldson, Arkansas. This is Elder Neal Phelan Jr. preaching in our regular Sunday morning service. If you have your Bibles, we're gonna spend some time in the Gospel of Luke this morning. Last Sunday I did speak about the Christian experience, and two Sundays, or two sermons ago, I don't preach every Sunday now, but two sermons ago, I spoke on one of the characters of the Bible, and this morning I wanna do that as well. I think it's good for us to look at the characters in Scripture, the people there, and to do a little cameo. representation of them. There's a lot to be learned from each person that God has chosen to place in the sacred word. There's a lot of theology in it and if we read it and we study it we can learn a lot about doctrines and theology and about the way that God deals with people, how he deals with us. And so this morning, I want to look at a person, one of my favorite people in the New Testament, who is John the Baptist. So think about him this morning. And if we go back and begin to look in the scriptures, we find that there are two prophecies of him. before he was ever born. One of them was 400 years before his birth. The last book in the Old Testament, the book of Malachi, which was the last prophet after Malachi, the Lord did not send a prophet to Israel for 400 years. Silence was from God to his people because of their disobedience. But in Malachi chapter four, verses five and six, we find this prophecy of John the Baptist, tells us a little bit about him, his ministry. And then we're gonna see another prophecy in just a moment over in the book of Isaiah. Malachi chapter four, behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with the curse. So this prophecy of John the Baptist was given 400 years before his birth, before Christ, and after he came, some of the people were really looking for Elijah himself. You know, that's the thing about the Bible, sometimes you read something and you just assume something, but here's a person that's gonna come in the spirit and the power of Elijah, but it's not gonna be Elijah. And if we read the prophecy and the meaning of it, the meaning of it is very interesting to me because of what they're talking about John and what he's going to do. I read Gil concerning one of the statements here that he's going to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to the prophets. And he said this means that he's going to reconcile them together. the fathers and the children, who were divided by the schools and the sects of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and bring them to be of one mind, judgment, and faith to have a healthy love to one another and the Lord Christ. Now when I read that, it reminds me a lot of where we are in Christianity today. We have so many schools of thought in Christianity today. You can drive down the highway, you can see all the different signs in front of churches and different names of churches. It's kind of like we've come to a place where if you were to think about Christianity, when Christ gave the doctrines and the practices to the apostles, we could say you have a vanilla ice cream. But now you've got Baskin-Robbins. You've got all these different flavors of Christianity out there. They're different in their doctrines. They're different in their practices. And so people kind of go to these different places and try a little taste of everything to see which one they like the best. But if we're doing what we should do, we wanna get back to vanilla, don't we? We wanna get back to the truth. And that's what we have here, that John the Baptist is gonna come and he's going to shed some light upon the truth of God's word, the law and the truth that God gave to Moses in the very beginning of the Jews' religion. And he's going to turn the hearts of... Just imagine today, in Christianity today, if somebody had the power to do that, how that we would have one Christian church. There wouldn't be a variety of flavors out there. We would all understand the truth. The light would be given to us. And there is a truth, by the way. Some people look at Christianity and they say, well, you know, there's really not a truth. It's just whatever you want to believe, and that will be okay. Well, if that's true, then we can believe any religion we wanted to believe. But there is a truth, and it would be wonderful if God's people were under that canopy of truth in one church. But my friends, one day that's going to happen. One day we are all going to be under the canopy of one truth in one church, and we'll be with the Lord Jesus Christ. But our quest down here should be to find what the truth really is. And we do that by coming to church and also by reading the word of God. There's a lot of people that go to church every Sunday, but they never read the word of God. And so what they know is what they've been taught by men. of all the different flavors. That's why I ask you when I come into the pulpit, I say, open your Bible up, this is what I'm gonna be preaching from and I want you to read it for yourself because I'm a stickler about preaching from the scriptures. When people begin to start speaking in the church or somebody's going to be a minister, sometimes I see people get up and they talk about things. But a preacher is supposed to do like Jesus Christ did. If you'll read in the New Testament where Jesus Christ went into the temple, what did he do? He opened the book and he read from the book and he explained what he read to the people. And that's what a minister is supposed to do. Open the book, read from the book, explain it to people what the book means. Now, if I were to read something and say the sky is blue and I got up here and I read the sky is blue and then I said, well, the sky is not blue, it's green or yellow. You would know that I'm not telling you the truth. So I think when you come to church, you should bring your book. You should bring a notepad. This is a time for you to learn something from the Word of God that you can take home and study for yourself. So anyway. That's what he was going to do. And also he says, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. So here is, you know, a statement about something that's going to happen when this person coming in the spirit and power of Elijah, God is going to deal with some people in a very strong way. And if you'll recall the history of the Jewish people when Christ came, he told them that their temple was going to be destroyed and that he would rebuild it in so many days, three days. He spoke of his own body being the temple of God's people. But they didn't like it when Jesus Christ would speak about the destruction of their temple and of Jerusalem. In one place, in Luke chapter 21, Jesus said, then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let them which are in the midst of it depart out, and let not them that are in the countries enter there into, and to them which are with child, and to them that give suck in those days, for there shall be great distress in the land. Now here we have a continuing theme, 400 years before Christ came, 400 years before John the Baptist, and then Jesus himself begins to preach the same thing. And here's great light that's coming to the Jews. They're being told about the destruction of Jerusalem. They're being told about God's impending judgment upon them for their false doctrines, practices, turning away from the word of God. And so John the Baptist is playing a key part in the teaching of God's people in that day. You know, I think in many ways, Christianity, again, is like that, that people, many of God's people, they're Christians, they'll say I'm a Christian, but if you ask them what they know about this book, They've never read it. I believe a person who says that they're a Christian should be a student of God's word. They should be reading it. They should be trying to understand it. This is a book that the God who created heaven and earth has given to his people to read about him. Who we are, where we came from, why we're here, and what our purpose here on planet earth. And it's very important for us as God's people to be students of God's word. And I believe in a former day, Before we had all the entertainment that we have today, before we had Netflix and we have all the TV entertainment and the movies and everything going on today, people were more students of God's Word. It's something that they enjoyed doing. Now I remember when I was young, I kind of tried to spend a little time reading the scriptures, and I really didn't do a very good job of it, I'm going to be honest with you, because I was a kid. I was involved in everything I wanted to do and like doing things, but when I became older, I wanted to know something about the Word of God. I guess you could say God dealt with me. I hope He deals with you as well. I hope that He touches your heart. and causes you to want to search out the word of God. So even the apostle Paul said, when I was a child, I thought as a child, but he said, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. So we need to put some childish things away and be students of the word of God. But anyway, this is a prophecy concerning the coming of John the Baptist, what he's gonna do and the impending destruction of Jerusalem. Now the second prophecy we have of him, and there's a lot about John the Baptist, we could spend quite a bit of time this morning, but I'm gonna try to be as brief as I can, is over in the book of Isaiah. Now this is 700 years before his birth. Now somebody that's prophesied 700 years to come, you know he's going to have a key role in the scriptures as well as in our heritage as Christians. So in Isaiah chapter 40 verses one through five, we find Isaiah making the statement, comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Most of you know that passage of scripture that the Lord wants to comfort his people. And I believe that's the message of the gospel, my friends. The message of the gospel is to comfort God's people. You know, if I'm going to stand up here and dangle you over hell and tell you that if you don't do something today, that's not going to comfort you, is it? If you walk out this building, I love what Elder Dougherty used to talk about when he first became a member of the church. He was in a band, and he played the guitar. He was a great guitar player. And he said he was on the stage one night, and he was playing some music. And he had his band there, and they were really good. I think they were going to be on the Grand Ole Opry or something, and they were really good. And he said, I was up there, and he said, suddenly something came And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with playing music, but we got some musicians here, so I'm not saying anything wrong about that. But I'm talking about his experience, okay? He could have been a pharmacist and was convicted when he was in practice, but the Lord was gonna call him to be a preacher. But anyway, he was up there with this band, and he says, suddenly something came over him, and he said, I felt like just a worthless sinner. He didn't even go to church, by the way. And he said, I had to leave. He said, I put my instrument down and we were about to perform and everybody got upset at me in the band because I walked out. And anyway, he said, I didn't know what was wrong with me. And of course, we know what was wrong with him, don't we? The Lord was dealing with him. When the Lord deals with you, and he begins to convict your soul that you're a bankrupt, guilty sinner, which you are, you may not know it this morning, but by the way, you are. Maybe the Lord has convicted you or will. But anyway, he wanted to find out what was wrong with him. He thought he was sick. So he went to this preacher, and he and his wife sat in the room with the preacher, and the preacher said, Now, if you don't accept Jesus right now, and you walk out that door, and you're run over by a car, he said, you're going straight to hell. Well, Brother Dougherty said, I thought about that. And he said, me and my wife, we didn't do anything at that moment. He said, we just got up and walked out and we were walking across the road. And he said, I looked at my wife and he said, you know, I'm not sure what I believe right now, but he said, I know what I don't believe. And I don't believe that. Well, the Lord had shown him that, you know, he was such a sinner, there wasn't anything he was going to be able to do. I mean, how can, how can one sinner get another sinner out of hell? You know, they've got this story that's going around that we've got the gospel rope here this morning, and I'm gonna throw the gospel rope. You're down in a pit, and you're down there. If you don't lay hold on this gospel rope this morning, and you don't let me pull you out of the pit, then you're going to hell. Well, the problem is, is I'm a sinner just like you. I'm down in the pit too. We need somebody at the top of the pit that's got the rope that's not a sinner. And that person is Jesus Christ. And he doesn't throw the rope down for you to lay hold and get out. He goes down in the pit and he carries you out. We're passive in our salvation. So that's a message that I think is not, comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people means that you are a sinner. and there is nothing you can do. You're a bankrupt guilty sinner. You've got nothing to pay. You may say, well, I've got something to pay. I've got some good works over here, and I'm going to take these good works, and I'm going to pile them up, and they're going to be heavier than my bad works. Well, the problem is if you've just got one bad work, then you're still a bankrupt guilty sinner. Somebody's got to clean you good enough to get to heaven, and the only person that can do that is Jesus Christ. Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people means that you are a sinner. But Jesus Christ is the Savior. And in spite of your sin, Jesus Christ saved you. And your evidence is the fact that you love Him and that He has convicted you of your sin. You don't find people that are not convicted of their sins asking Jesus to forgive them. But people that Christ has convicted of their sins, a poor people, you know, Jesus spoke to poor people. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the meek. Those are the people that are blessed, the people that God has touched and shown them their sins. And we call upon him, we thank him for what he has done. That's the message of God's grace. That comforts my heart. I've been in both camps. I believe two things, and when I came to see what God's grace was, God convicted me, I recognized there was nothing I could do, then I could say nothing in my hand, I bring simply to the cross, I cling. That's the message of comfort that we find. Comfort ye my people, saith your God, speak comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished. Our warfare is accomplished by Christ, that her iniquity is pardoned. She is received of the Lord's hand, double for all her sins. And here is the message of John the Baptist, by the way. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness. My friends, today, When you preach the true message of God's grace, I believe you're a voice crying in the wilderness. This world today rejects what grace really is. We've got too many trained professors in a religion that deny the sufficiency of Christ's death. They'll tell you that Jesus Christ is Jesus Christ, but they'll tell you that the only way you're gonna get to heaven is by Jesus Christ and through them. We don't need them. The only person we need is the person of Jesus Christ. So I feel like many times we're a voice crying in the wilderness. Again, I say Christianity is much like it was in the days of Christ. Truth is hard to find. There are so many other messages in the world today that it's hard to find what the truth really is. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. So this is going to be what he's going to do. And he's going to prepare a people for the Lord. Now that was John Baptist's ministry, basically. They called him the harbinger, the one that came before Jesus Christ. He was going to be the one that was going to announce Jesus Christ. He's going to baptize Jesus Christ. And he's going to point God's people to Jesus Christ to follow him. He said, I must decrease, but, I mean, Jesus Christ said, I must, or he said, I must decrease, he must increase, speaking of the person of Jesus Christ. So John the Baptist is gonna decrease. He's gonna do his job, and then Christ is going to increase. So he's going to preach to people. He's gonna call upon them to repent. He's going to give them light. He's gonna point them to Christ. And there you are gonna find the very beginning of the New Testament church. These people, that John baptized. Many of the first Christians were people that John the Baptist had baptized. So here we find a prophecy of him 700 years before his birth. Now, there are two places in the New Testament that prophesy of him and his ministry as well. So we've looked at two prophecies in the Old Testament. Now let's look at two in the New Testament. And that's why I wanted you to go to the Gospel of Luke. So we're going to go to chapter one. And this prophecy is from an angel. Now, do you think the angel's testimony of him is going to be any different than what we read in Isaiah and Malachi? It's going to be exactly the same thing. And then we're going to hear his father prophesy of him here in just a moment of his ministry and what he's going to do. So, Luke chapter 1, I'm going to read a little bit for you. So pay attention, stay with me this morning, because sometimes when you start reading, people kind of get distracted. But in Luke chapter 1, we're going to begin reading in verse 5. There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abiah, and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. So they both had the lineage of the priesthood. And so they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. So they were very, very good people. You can say that about some people. These are very, very good people. They were faithful to God's house. They were faithful to the ministry in which God had called Zacharias. And here's a great blessing here, too. I preached on a sermon several years ago about how they had remained in God's house. They had had no children. You know they've been praying for children all of their life. And in their old age, they're going to have a child. So my message was, Be faithful in God's house, blessings are yet to come. So we got to be faithful and patient sometimes before we receive many of our blessings. But anyway, they had no child because Elizabeth was barren. And they both were now well stricken in years, and it came to pass that while he executed the priest's office before God in the order of his course, according to the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of God." So his part in the ministry there was to go in and burn the incense in the temple. So we know that the Levites and the ironical priesthood, they all had different parts that they fulfilled in the temple, and this was his part. And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense. So they're praying outside, and he's inside, and so they're all praying together. And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing in the right side of the altar of incense. So an angel appears. unto Zacharias, who was going to be the father of John the Baptist. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. I've seen this angel. You know, many times when people saw an angel, they didn't say, hallelujah, I've seen an angel. It scared them to death because the angel appearance was very frightening. But the angel said unto him, fear not, Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard. Of course, he's been praying for a child. His wife's been praying for a child. A lot of times our prayers aren't answered for many, many, many years. You may have a prayer you're praying right now and you may not see the fulfillment of it till your very last day. Who knows? But sometimes, I like what it says, the Lord is not slack concerning his promise. So anyway, for thy prayer is heard and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son and they shall call his name John. Now that's a strange name, by the way. You know, if you wanna get your computer out and type in John in one of your Bible softwares, you're not gonna find John in the Old Testament. That's a New Testament name. So anyway, thou shalt call his name John, and thou shalt have joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. That's because he's going to be what they would refer to in that day as a Nazarite. And he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God, and he shall go before them in the spirit and power of Elias. to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. So Zacharias begins to question this, I'm an old man, I'm well stricken in years, and the angel says I'm Gabriel, and this is gonna come to pass, but because you don't believe it, you're not gonna be able to speak for a season until the child is born, and so this prophecy is given of John the Baptist, by the angel. Now here's a little theology in this. I want you to look at this thing here a minute. This is very interesting concerning verse 15. He shall be great in the sight of the Lord and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb. Hmm. Doesn't that, isn't that saying he's going to be born again even in his mother's womb? Well sure it does. That's exactly what it means. It tells us something about how we're born again. We're not born again when we make a decision, or we go to church, or we read our Bible, or we go like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. She clicks her heels three times and she's in Oz. Much of Christianity today is like The Wizard of Oz. If you'll do something, then you'll get somewhere. Here we find that John the Baptist was born of God's Spirit in his mother's womb. And if you're born of the Spirit of God, it doesn't mean you were born of the Spirit of God in your mother's womb. But I can tell you this, if you're one of God's elect that He chose from the foundation of the world, you're going to be born of God's Spirit sometime between conception and death. Because it is at the new birth that God brings you into vital relationship with Him. You cannot have a relationship with God or the person of Jesus Christ unless you are alive spiritually. Now I've got to have a natural life to have a relationship with my mother and father. And by the way, what did I do to have a natural life? Nothing. I was completely passive in my natural birth. So in my spiritual birth, I was completely passive as well. I did nothing to obtain it. It was God that brought me into that relationship because He wanted me to have a relationship with Him. And now that I am alive, that I have a relationship with God, now I can speak to Him. I can talk to Him. I want to. I want to pray to Him. That's what Paul wrote in the book of Romans when he said, now we cry, Abba, Father. We call upon the Father because we are born again. You know, some people get it backwards. If you call upon the Father, you can become born again. Well, dead people don't call upon anybody. You've got to be alive spiritually before you ever want to have a spiritual relationship with God. And here we find this theology of John the Baptist. And by the way, I was reading about his life and noticing that he's out in the wilderness. You know, this prophecy comes to his father. and says he's going to be born, and how can this happen, and he questions it. But anyway, after his birth, John the Baptist just disappears. I mean, he's not even around the family or anyone. He's out in the wilderness. Out in the wilderness. He comes into town one day, and he's wearing leather skins. And he's eating wild locusts and honey. He doesn't have his little suit and tie on like I do this morning in church, you know. He's not one of these preachers that's all dressed up and been to some theological school and been trained by people, you know. God called him and gave him a gift and I believe that's the way that it happens today. So he shows up, and how in the world, he's been out in the wilderness, he's not been going to church and listening to the Sadducees and the Pharisees preach. He's not been going through any of their rituals. How in the world did he become a child of God? Not only is he a child of God, he is a prophet of God. You see how God works in our lives? He works sovereignly in the life of every individual person. So here he comes into town and he's preaching and he's already born of God's spirit. There's so much theology in that concerning how people are born again and how we become children of God that over in John chapter three, a very familiar passage of scripture that people talk about a lot. They'll talk about John 3.16. I'm going to turn over there just for a moment. But in John 3.16, it says, and we can basically quote this, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Now we're going to read that, we're going to come on down in a minute and see how people are born again. But first let's look at this. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish. If you're just casually reading that, you might think that it says if you'll just believe in God, you'll have everlasting life. Right? That's what's commonly taught in Christianity today. But you see, that's not what it's teaching. For God so loved the world. Now which world does he so love that he's gonna give everlasting life to? Let's say planet Earth. He loves planet Earth so much he's gonna give everlasting life to planet Earth. Is that the world? No, no. This word world is translated from cosmos and it's used in different places in the New Testament. This is a specific world that he so loved. It is a world of people that he chose before the world began, referred to in scripture as my elect. A chosen people that God chose before the world began and that he sent his son to die for those very same people. That whosoever believeth in him. He didn't say whosoever will believe in him. He says whosoever believeth. Your belief is the evidence of the fact that Jesus Christ loved you. You are a part of the world that he loved. Now you believe because you've been brought into a vital, living relationship with God through the Holy Spirit at your new birth. So, whosoever believeth in him. Now, let's read down a little bit further. And, or let's go back a little bit, excuse me. to see Nicodemus that comes to see Jesus Christ at night. And Jesus said, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. See, Jesus Christ is talking about the new birth in this whole chapter. If you're not born again, like John the Baptist was, I'm gonna stay with my theme here this morning. We're talking about John the Baptist, but we're learning some theology from him, right? John the Baptist born again in his mother's womb. Jesus said, if you're not born again, you cannot see the kingdom, which means you cannot see or understand spiritual things. You cannot understand the scriptures. You cannot understand the preacher. You can't read the Bible and get anything out of it. You have no desire for God. You do not love God. You do not love Jesus Christ. You might say, well, I thought everybody did that. No, no. Randy was preaching, praying this morning about how wicked the world is. Do you think those people are lovers of Christ? Do you think they love you? No. They'd put this place out of business if they had an opportunity because they do not belong to God. They are not of God's elect. That bothers some people. They'll claim that God chose Israel, but when you begin to talk to them about election, that he chose a particular people, they got a problem with that. Isn't that throwing... That's kind of confusing to me. But you see, God chose Israel as a nation, not as a spiritual people. And I'm gonna preach on that in a few Sundays because we see a lot going on in Israel and I'm gonna preach on Israel and who they really are. But this more right now, I'm talking about God's people being born again. Now Nicodemus, he said, you cannot see the kingdom of God. Now Nicodemus is confused about that statement. He says, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb? and be born. Jesus isn't talking about a natural birth, he's talking about our spiritual birth. And he said, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water, even of the spirit, and it's speaking of the same thing, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth. Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the spirit. Everyone that is born of the Spirit is born in exactly the same way. You see, that answers a great question concerning the people in the Old Testament. Now, the people here in New Testament times will say, well, you've got to do this thing. You've got to accept Jesus. You've got to read Romans 10. You've got to do the... Romans 10 wasn't even written in the Old Testament. You know, these things people... So, how were those people in the Old Testament born again? Well, let's take the red letters this morning. Let's take the words of Jesus Christ. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. The wind bloweth where it, listen, that means where it pleases. Now you all know the wind blows where it pleases. You can't change where the wind is blowing. I was like, we were hunting the other day, and I thought, well, which way is the wind blowing? The deer can smell me down here. I would prefer it not to blow that way, and so I'm going to change the way the wind blows this morning while I'm hunting and fix it like I want it. Can I do that? Can anybody do that? No. Can anybody give somebody the new birth? No, the wind blows where it pleases. So is everyone that's born of the spirit by the sovereign will of God when God speaks into their heart and says, live. That is how people are born again. So we learn a lot about theology by reading these people and how they were born and how they become children of God and what they did. I mean, many things today just throw all that out the window. Another great scripture concerning our new birth is over in the book of 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. That word creature means creation. All things are passed away, behold all things become new. Here we go to the subject of creation when it comes to the new birth. So we know about creation a little bit, don't we? We read Genesis 1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. He created light. He created man. He created the animals. He created the trees. He created everything. And we can be real sticklers about that, you know, and we can say, you know, I believe in creation. I'm a Christian. I believe that God created everything out of nothing. And then we can get right off base when we talk about the new birth. Well, but when it comes to the new birth, I think that we weren't really created by the sovereign work of God, that we kind of helped God. He did his part and I did my part by reading something or quoting something or doing something. Well, is that a creation? When God said, let there be light, did he say to light, light, if you'll accept me, then you'll be light. No, he just spoke it into existence. And that's the way that we have our new birth today. Well, we got another place here that speaks about a prophecy of John, and this is by his father. The angels already spoken about him and said what he's going to do. Now his father's mouth is going to finally be opened when he is born. And they want to name him something else. And they want to name him after his father. And his mother said, no, his name is going to be John. And they all marveled. And they asked his father, what's his name going to be? Well, he couldn't talk yet, so they give him a writing tablet, and he writes out, his name will be John, and they all marvel, John. Well, you know he had communicated with his wife already. He said, the angel appeared, he had to write it all down, by the way, because he couldn't talk. And he said, the angel appeared to me while I was in the temple, we're gonna have a son, and his name's gonna be John. And that's what the angel said. So his mother knows that his name's gonna be John. So we turn over, we're still in Luke here, I guess, and let's go to chapter one, verse 67. Luke has some really long chapters. I'm reading through Luke right now, by the way. You're drinking your coffee and you're thinking, I need to do something. You're doing your reading lesson in the morning. And I have to admit it, sometimes I'm thinking, this is a long chapter. We have to be patient like Mary and Martha. Mary chose the good part, which was to be patient and spend some time with the Lord in the morning. So anyway, we're going over to Luke chapter 1 verse 67. And what manner of child shall this be in the hand of the Lord who is with him? And his father, Zacharias, was filled with the Holy Ghost and prophesied, saying, Here's a prophecy of him as well. Two in the Old Testament, one by the angel, and here's this one. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began. So he's referring back to the prophets and what we gave you this morning. That we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us to perform the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant. The oath which he swear to our father Abraham that he would grant unto us that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear. And they were those that believed John the Baptist and those that believed Jesus Christ, those that left Jerusalem as the bullet that believed the testimony, their testimony, they were saved. in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life. And thou, child, now this is speaking of John the Baptist, shall be called the prophet of the highest, the prophet of Christ. For thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways. Again, he's going before Christ, he's preparing his ways, preparing the people to become first members of the Christian church. Verse 77, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the remission of their sins. Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the day spring from on high hath visited us to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace. And the child grew and was waxed strong in spirit and was in the deserts till the day of his showing. unto Israel. Two verses here I want you to look at concerning John the Baptist and what he was going to do. He's going to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins. Did it say that he was going to save them himself? No. He's going to give knowledge of salvation. That's what the minister does when he comforts God's people. He gives knowledge of salvation, how you were saved by the person of Jesus Christ. There's a great comfort in that, by the way, that if you've not heard the message of God's grace, that you can really be tortured by wondering if you've done enough good things in your life to be able to live with God in heaven. You can fear hell every day. And I've known of people that have feared hell every day. They've laid awake on their bed at night worried about whether or not they're gonna make it to heaven or not. But we wanna give knowledge of salvation for you to understand what Christ has done for you. That was his message. And by the way, that was the message that God told the Apostle Paul he was going to have as well. If you'll go over and read in the book of Acts, in the book of Acts chapter 26, Jesus Christ is gonna appear unto the Apostle Paul and he says, I've appeared to you for this purpose, to open their eyes. To turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan into God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith. To give light, to open their eyes. Jesus Christ came as a light unto the world to open their eyes. John the Baptist came as a light unto the world to open their eyes. And that's what we want to do when we're standing in the pulpit. We want to give light to the word of God. Now light is a wonderful thing, isn't it? Darkness, at nighttime, it seems like things are really worse. If you have a problem, they're worse in the middle of the night. You wake up and you got some daylight. It seems like there's some hope, right? Darkness is a bad thing. We recently had a little remodel done at our house, and they tore a wall down in our kitchen. And of course, when they tore the wall down in the kitchen, they had to take out all this sheetrock and everything. So you know what happened. We had sheetrock dust everywhere, everywhere. even in our hair, it was, we had it all over us. But we kept cleaning the floor and cleaning the floor and finally we had some company coming over one night and we thought, well, we got the floor pretty clean. I got up the next morning and the sun was shining that light through that back window and I looked down at that floor and I'm thinking, we got as much light, we still got this dust all over the floor. You know, light reveals things that are otherwise hidden. I don't know if you ever tried to read something in the, you need a little bit, I'm getting older now, and if I read something, I gotta have a lot of light to be able to see it, but I've noticed how important light is even when you're reading the older that you get. But he's gonna come and shed light. And that's what the gospel is. It's light. It sheds the light upon our hearts. It shows us our sin. It shows us who Christ is that dwells in our hearts. The Apostle Paul over in 2 Timothy 1, Brother Dan was preaching over here a few Sundays ago over in 2 Timothy, and I love what Paul told the young minister Timothy. And I think he told Timothy this because he wanted Timothy to never stray from what the purpose of the gospel is. You know, that's one thing that as ministers, you know, Brother Dan is my son in the ministry, I'm his father in the ministry. And I called upon this church to ordain him. I felt like he had a gift after he began to speak. But I can tell you what, if he didn't understand what I'm about to read to you right here, I would never have asked for you to ordain him. It's very important for fathers in the ministry to make sure that the men that come up under them preach the truth. Not too long ago, there was a friend of mine who had somebody coming up in his church. And I asked the young man that was coming up under him one time when I was with him alone, I said, so how do you think that a person is born again? He said, well, there's not just one way, there's several ways that people are born again. He said, I think you can hear the gospel and be born again, or God may just regenerate you all by himself. That really troubled me that he said that. People aren't born different ways. So I didn't say anything to the man to do his father in the ministry. He was a friend of mine. I thought, well, I'll let him take care of that himself. The young man began to speak in the church and he was finally ordained and did speak in the church for several years. But finally, when it all came to pass, he left the old Baptist church because he began to preach things that were not in the scriptures. He did not believe basically the doctrine that we believe about the work of Jesus Christ and how that we are born again by the immediate work of the Holy Spirit. So he left, he departed. He never really got it. He never really understood this passage of Scripture. So over in the book of 2 Timothy 1, Paul says to Timothy, Be thou not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord. Now you may say that he's saying don't be ashamed of Jesus. But he's saying more than that. He's saying, don't be ashamed of the truth of God's Word. You know, the truth of God's Word, even among many Christians today, is disdained. When you talk about a person being born again by the immediate work of the Holy Spirit and that the preacher has nothing to do with it, that's an offense unto many men today. Because they insist that without them, nobody can go to heaven. I know that because I've been among some of them that basically cast me out because of this verse right here. Notice what he says. Don't be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me as prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God. Who has saved us? Who saved us? God saved us. The church didn't save you. Your preacher didn't save you. The Bible didn't save you. The Scriptures didn't save you. Jesus said, search the Scriptures. For in them, you think you have eternal life. But they are they which testify of Me. You see, the Pharisees and the Sadducees believed the Scriptures were what saved you and gave you spiritual life. And that's the belief of humanity. You leave man to himself, and he's going to put himself in the picture, isn't he? He's going to elevate Himself to the person of Jesus Christ. That He Himself is a part of your salvation. When He Himself is a bankrupt, guilty sinner. Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling. That holy calling is not the gospel call. It doesn't come from the mouth of a sinner. The holy call is the call that comes from the mouth of God. That's when you're born again. He called you with a holy calling. He called John the Baptist with a holy calling when he was still in his mother's womb. I believe he called the Apostle Paul when he was on the road to Damascus, threatening out slaughters, putting Christians to death. And Jesus Christ appeared to him and said, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, who art thou, Lord? He didn't know who he was, but he knew his Lord. A few minutes later, he was singing a different song, wasn't he? Lord, what would thou have me to do? Putting Christians to death one minute, and the next minute saying, Lord, what would you have me to do? Was there not a miraculous change that occurred at that point? Was anybody preaching to the Apostle Paul when he was born again on the Damascus road? Was anybody passing out any tracts? Was anybody asking him to accept Jesus? Was anybody asking him to read something in the Bible? No. God dealt with him sovereignly and changed him on the spot, and that's the way He does every one of us. Somebody might say, well, that was special on that occasion. Jesus was there. He's there every time. It may not be on the road to Damascus, but when you're born again, He's there. What about the thief on the cross? There were two of them by the way, one on the right and one on the left. You read one gospel account of them and they were both gnashing Jesus Christ in his teeth. They were saying, you saved everybody else, save yourself, save us. But suddenly one of them had a change of heart. He said, Lord remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said, today. Today, thou shalt be with me in paradise. What changed that man? Jesus is over there. He's dying. He looks like a miserable failure, hanging on the cross and dying, put to death by Roman soldiers. How could one man change his heart and suddenly ask Jesus to remember him? By the way, he didn't get to go to church before he got down from the cross, did he? Or recite any words. God changed that man on the spot. You see how God works in our lives? Wouldn't we be able to give God more glory if we said, you did it and I did nothing? Wouldn't Jesus Christ receive more glory if we said, I'm nothing but a bankrupt, guilty sinner, and you, in spite of my sin, chose me before the world began. You saw every bad thing I was ever going to do. And in spite of myself, you still love me. And you still died for me upon the cross. Wouldn't that give Him more glory for me to say, well, you know, He did His part, I accepted Jesus. And I'm a Christian today. You know, that may sound pious to people. But it's an insult to Jesus Christ for you to take any credit in your salvation. For He paid it all. We sing that song, Jesus paid it all. A lot of people sing Jesus paid it all. But they don't really believe He did. They believe that Jesus made the down payment and now you're supposed to come along and you're supposed to finish it up. Well, hallelujah. I'm sure God's going to give you a star when you get to heaven for doing your part. No. No. Get me wrong. I think there's a lot of God's people that believe they did their part. That doesn't mean they're not a child of God. Doesn't mean they don't love Jesus Christ. But it does mean that they need some light. Notice what else he says. Called us with a holy calling not according to our works. Well, you'd think people would understand that. If you read a scripture or you recite something, you accept Jesus or you're baptized, that's your works. And by the way, you should have your works. Somebody might say, well, you're a primitive Baptist, you just preach, you're not supposed to do anything. No. No, you should confess Christ. You should be baptized. You should follow Him. You should do good works. But don't think that any of those things are going to do what Jesus Christ did. Isn't that what the prophet said? All of our righteousness are nothing but filthy rags. Now, your righteousnesses are good things, but you hold them up in the face of the Heavenly Father to pay for one of your sins. God looks at that as a filthy rag. You've just insulted God the Father for offering His Son, and you've just insulted the Son because He died for you if you're going to offer up your works to God. Not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ before the world began." Isn't that what it says, Ephesians 1 and 4, that we were chosen in Christ before the world began? That God chose His people before the world began? You know, Scripture is really not that complicated if you just believe what it says. Just believe what it says. But now is made manifest, or it's been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ. who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. What does the gospel do right there? He just told you it gives light. Light upon the salvation you already have, how you got it. Light upon the Christ that dwells in your heart. Light upon our sins. Light. Light's a great thing. I'll have to use my illustration. I always use when we're talking about light that I was over at the gymnasium a few years ago looking for some trophies that our high school basketball team had won. And coach told me they were under the bleachers. And I went under the bleachers and couldn't see them anywhere. I came back out and I said, there's no trophies under there. He said, yeah, they're under there. He handed me a flashlight and I went under there, crawled up under there right where I was, flicked on the flashlight, gold and silver trophies all under there, just shining like everything. You know, that light didn't cause those trophies didn't make those trophies or create those trophies. That light just revealed something that was already there. And that's what the gospel does. It reveals the Christ that dwells in your heart, that's already there, that took up his abode by his sovereignty, not by your allowing Jesus in. Somebody said, well, just let Jesus, he's knocking on your door, let him in your heart. No, Jesus goes where he wants to go. That's referring to a church, by the way, that had put Jesus out. He's got a message that he's calling upon people to repent. And finally, we're out of time this morning, but he was beheaded by Herod, a great man beheaded by, you might refer to as a monster. Why did God allow that to happen? We wonder why God allows things to happen, but he was beheaded for standing up for the truth of God's word. He was not somebody that would change his mind and be tossed about by every wind of doctrine. I'll just give you one final word, and that's Jesus Christ's commentary on him. He said, what went you out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind? But what went you out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously appareled and live delicately are in king's courts. But what went you out to see? A prophet? A, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet, this is he of whom it is written, behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare the way before thee, for I say unto you, among those that are born of women, There is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist. Jesus Christ had a great commentary of him because he stood for truth. He was rejected of men, many men. Many followed him. He baptized many people. But he was finally beheaded for standing for the truth of God's word. Thank you for your attention this morning. Well, I was very blessed by that sermon. I needed to hear it. It was a lot of meat and potatoes doctrine, much of which is rejected today. Brother Sonny made mention of John 3.16 and the world that is mentioned there. And I think that's a bit of a stumbling stone for a lot of people based on what is broadly taught about that. And many will just say, look, world means world. It means all of humanity. That's just what it means. Everybody knows that's what world means. That's not the case. And I'll give you a Bible study to do this week, if you question that. John 17, nine, the high priestly prayer, the Lord Jesus Christ makes this statement. I pray for them, I pray not for the world. He's got two different groups of people there, them and the world. That verse alone, completely destroys the assertion made broadly in Christianity that world always means all of humanity. It does not mean it in John 17, 9. And if that's sufficient to open the door of your curiosity to make you say, you know, maybe I need to look into this matter of world a little bit more, maybe what these old Baptist ministers have been saying about this, there might be something to that. That's a good place to explore. It does not mean that. He also made the comment, something about this gospel rope and being in the pit and the gospel rope, and that is a very common metaphor in Christianity. It's actually commonly used by Calvinists, not just the Armenians, but Calvinists, who we get lumped in with a lot. Well, y'all believe Tulip and y'all believe the doctrines of grace. Aren't y'all really the same as the Calvinists? Well, Calvinists use this metaphor a lot. It's a terrible metaphor to represent salvation, right? As you said, people sing, Jesus paid it all. And lots of people sing that, but they don't really believe it. What they mean is Jesus bought the rope. He ain't going to do any pulling or anything. I guess He's handing the rope to me and Sonny, and we're at the top of the well. We're trying to pull people up. Well, Jesus didn't get anybody out of the well if all He did was buy the rope, right? By the way, if you're down in that pit, and we're just sinners too, by the way, We didn't get saved and get up out of the well so that we could become an eternal savior of somebody through our efforts. That's not the way it works. Jesus Christ is the one and only savior of men in an eternal sense. That's just all there is to it. You say, well, I'm down there. Yeah, don't you have to grab the rope? Don't you have to hold on to it and let Jesus pull you up or let Brother Dan and Brother Sonny pull you up? Well, there's a lot of problems with that. You'd have to see the rope, first of all. Right? You'd have to hear it, hey, grab hold of the rope. You'd have to have a desire to grab the rope. You'd have to have the strength to hold on to the rope. You'd have to hold on it till we pulled you out of there. There's a whole lot of stuff you gotta do under this metaphor, and that has nothing to do with how God saves sinners. Because you're dead. You're spiritually dead. And the only one who can speak life into someone who's spiritually dead, a man who can't see, he can't hear, can't grab a rope, can't want a rope, can't even understand his situation, is someone who's had life spoken into them by God himself. That's what we believe. So that's a really important point of distinction between us and even others that are in the sovereign grace camp who say they believe TULIP. When you start scratching beneath the surface on their doctrine, they believe Arminian things just as well. You gotta hold on, you gotta grab the rope, you gotta want the rope, all that stuff. That's not how it works. It works by being born again, and that really pictures conception, the instantaneous imparting of life. And we didn't have anything to do with that in our natural lives. We don't have anything to do with it in our spiritual lives. But if you're someone today who says, these things are of interest to me, I hear about the Lord Jesus Christ, that sounds abundantly wonderful to me. I see that I'm a sinner and I need God's grace. And the sound that there is a savior sent from God whose name was Jesus is abundantly wonderful to me. I can tell you, you would only feel that way in sincerity if you were already born again. And that's why you can enter into that peace. What I just told you didn't impart life to anybody. But if you have life, you can see that light and you can enter into the joy of it. I pray it's a blessing to you. Thank you for listening to SuccessfulSavior.org, the ministry of Harmony Primitive Baptist Church. This has been Elder Neal Phelan, Jr. preaching from one of our regular meetings. Come and join us as we worship God in the simplicity of Christ every Sunday morning at 416 North Hall Street in Donaldson, Arkansas. At Harmony, we don't have many things that are so common in the religion of our day, but we do have a successful Savior. We invite you to come and see.